VX waste leaks onto floor inside sealed area
Incident
poses no danger to workers, community
By Patricia L. Pastore/Tribune-Star
A leak of about five gallons of VX hydrolysate,
the byproduct of VX neutralization, was discovered by maintenance workers
early Wednesday at the Newport Chemical Depot.
The hydrolysate, a caustic hazardous waste, leaked onto the floor inside
a sealed area of the Newport Chemical Agent Disposal Facility, said Terry
Arthur, Army spokeswoman.
"The waste liquid was immediately contained within a sump," Arthur said.
The leak occurred during a maintenance operation
when control-room operators were transferring wastewater by remote to test
a flow meter, said Jeff Brubaker, Army site project manager. He said the
five gallons flowed into a sump in the sealed concrete floor of an area known
as the toxic cubical.
There was no danger to the workers or the community, Brubaker said.
The hydrolysate was previously cleared by laboratory tests "showing that
it was non-detect for chemical agent VX when it was produced by a chemical
neutralization process in early June," Brubaker said.
Control-room operators noticed the leak on a closed-circuit television screen
and immediately shut off the flow inside the toxic cubicle, Brubaker said.
"Our people responded quickly and exactly as they have been trained," he
said. He said workers were preparing to enter the toxic cubicle to complete
cleanup and investigate the cause of the leak.
Operations were suspended June 20 after a 30-gallon spill of a mixture
of VX, sodium hydroxide and water caused by a valve/diaphragm malfunction.
Later, before operations resumed, a waste profile revealed the hydrolysate
is more flammable than previously believed, with a flash point of between
68 and 88 degrees, the Army has said.
Neutralization of VX won't resume until the Army determines how to correct
the flammability problem, the Army has said.
Any material below the 200-degree flash point is considered flammable.
The Army has destroyed more than 3,000 gallons of the 1,269 tons of VX stored
at Newport in a process expected to take about 30 months.
Patricia Pastore can be reached at
(812)231- 4271 or pat.pastore@tribstar.com.
Story created July 14, 2005 09:25:57 CDT.
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